Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill.

💬 SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

It’s not that often that a Minister is able to stand in the House and speak to a bill in his or her name with clear evidence on the table that the policy is already working. I don’t mean modelling or predictions from officials. I don’t mean by reference to overseas examples. I mean clear evidence that the policy has already started to work. But I’m very pleased to be able to inform the House tonight that that is the case with the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill, and that’s because from 1 July 2021 the initial parts of the Government’s clean car package took effect. These were the discounts that were implemented on battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Those changes did not require legislative amendment to take effect.

The effect of those provisions has been extraordinarily successful, and I would like to show to the House briefly the effect that those measures have had. The clean car discount has already led to an enormous increase in the number of clean vehicles entering the New Zealand fleet. The number of electric vehicles coming into New Zealand and being registered has roughly tripled month on month since the introduction of the clean car discount. Since 1 July, and the discount coming into effect, the average emissions of new vehicles coming into New Zealand have decreased by 15 percent across the fleet. It took eight years, before 1 July 2021, for us to achieve that reduction in emissions previously. In September, for the first time ever, the top-selling new vehicle in New Zealand was an electric vehicle, and one in four electric vehicles on the road today has been purchased since 1 July, when the clean car discount commenced. New Zealanders are voting with their feet. They’re voting with their wallets. They want cleaner and more affordable vehicles for themselves, their families, their communities, and for our environment. This policy is already working. The implementation as it will happen after this bill has passed, of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill, will ensure that we keep up that momentum.

I do think it’s worth just tracking back a little bit to the why—why it is we are moving forward with this policy. It goes back to the fact that we have this enormous challenge in front of us, one that this entire House, virtually, has accepted: the challenge of actually taking decisive action on climate change. We know that we have to take up that challenge if we want to reach net zero by 2050 and, barring one party currently in this House, every party represented here, including the National Party, voted to try and reach net zero by 2050, voted to set up an independent climate commission, and voted to set up five-yearly carbon budgets to ratchet down our emissions to reach those targets. Well, having done that, we can’t just sit on our fine words as a House; we actually have to introduce the policies that will make the difference, and that is a challenge for every party in this House as they come to vote on this piece of legislation tonight.

The independent Climate Change Commission—which, again, I say every party in this House, except for the ACT Party, voted to establish—said that they should have the independent capacity to tell us what we needed to do, and they have told us what we need to do: we need to reduce our emissions from the transport sector by 41 percent by 2035. We need to achieve around about 30 percent of the vehicles on our road by 2035 being zero-emissions vehicles. We’re going to have to do something if we want to achieve that, because the truth is that New Zealand’s performance in this area has been woeful. We have one of the dirtiest fleets in the world. Since 1990, the part of the New Zealand economy in which emissions have increased the most has been our vehicle fleet, where emissions have increased by 90 percent. Only New Zealand, Russia, and Australia—of developed economies—do not have an emissions vehicle standard. We are currently the laggards, and if we don’t take action as the rest of the world and car companies, countries all around the world, clean up fleets, we will become the dumping ground for the world’s dirtiest vehicles. And that’s why this piece of legislation is so important.

There are two strands to it. The first is the clean car standard, and the standard is about supporting and incentivising importers to get cleaner stock of vehicles into New Zealanders. It incentivises them by having a steadily increasing target for bringing cleaner vehicles into New Zealand year by year. Importantly—and many of those New Zealand - based importers tell me this—for the first time it is giving them leverage when they go back to their head offices in Europe or Japan or Korea or China to say, “We need to get cleaner vehicles into New Zealand.” They previously haven’t had that, because we haven’t had a standard; so we’ve got the dirty vehicles. The clean car standard gives those New Zealand - based companies the ability to go back and get cleaner vehicles here for Kiwis to be able to drive.

It’s important to note that this is also a manifesto commitment. The Labour Party campaigned on setting up a 105 grams of carbon dioxide per tonne of emissions target by 2025 and via this piece of legislation we will follow through and we will implement that commitment that we made to the electorate.

The bill seeks targets that go through to 2027. Countries all over the world have targets with an increasing level of ambition up to that point and beyond. The bill sets up the Minister with the ability to review those targets in 2024, and I acknowledge the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, very ably led by Greg O’Connor, who have proposed a number of changes to the bill, including strengthening the consultation requirements around how that review will take place.

There were many submitters on the bill. The majority supported the bill. Some people who submitted asked us to go even further. The committee has made a range of other changes, including introducing a transition period before the clean car standard takes effect; strengthening the provisions for review; as I said, clarifying how carbon dioxide emissions are determined to ensure that that’s clear and understood across all vehicle types coming into the country; and improving the definition of a used vehicle. I thank the committee and all of the submitters for the work on that.

It’s important to note that, with the clean car standard, through the consultation process prior to legislation being drafted, considerable flexibility has been built into the scheme. So importers of vehicles across their fleets can bank, borrow, and trade in credits to make sure that they achieve those targets across the average of their fleet that they bring in on an annual basis.

The second part of the clean car package in this bill is the clean car discount that I spoke about earlier on. As I said, it’s already working. Modelling shows it’ll prevent over 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050, and the result so far is that we’re ahead of target. Even our most optimistic upside scenarios for the numbers of electric vehicles coming into New Zealand have been significantly exceeded. Since the clean car discount came into effect on 1 July, five of the top-selling new vehicles have attracted the discount, and it’s either seven or eight of the top-selling used vehicles attract the discount. This is providing cars that Kiwis want to get into.

The standard and the discount work together to increase the supply of clean vehicles and then to incentivise and support Kiwis to get into them. Modelling from overseas jurisdictions where discounts have applied clearly shows this is a progressive measure, and it’s also one that makes economic sense. For every tonne of carbon that we avoid through this policy, it doesn’t cost New Zealand money; it saves our country money because we save so massively on the national fuel bill that we currently have to use, and that’ll save Kiwi consumers up to $7,000 or $8,000 over the lifetime of their vehicles.

As I said at the beginning, this is a policy that’s already working. The National Party, my friends over here, supported the establishment of the independent climate commission. They supported net zero. They support, via that, five-yearly carbon budgets and the need to reduce our emissions from this sector by 41 percent by 2035. At some point, they are going to have to stop opposing every single measure that is actually put forward to achieve any of their targets. And I’ll guarantee one thing to this House: at whatever point that party pulls itself together and is able to get back into Government, they will never repeal this policy, because not even they are backward enough to go backwards on a policy and make the New Zealand vehicle fleet dirtier and make clean vehicles more expensive, which is what would happen were they to repeal this policy.

And so my question for them tonight: is the Christopher Luxon National Party actually any different from the Judith Collins one, or any of the other previous leaders they’ve cycled through? Are they actually going to step up and support a policy that follows through on what they have stood up in this House and said they support, which is actually taking meaningful action on one of the great challenges of our time, reducing emissions so that this is a decent world to live in for this generation and those to come? I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. That was a fascinating speech by the Minister of Transport in support of this piece of legislation, the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill. National will be opposing this piece of legislation because, ultimately, this piece of legislation will not work in achieving the goal that the Government is—

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: It’s working already.

And I hear them say, “It’s already working. It’s already working.” Well, what’s working is not this legislation; what’s working is a range of subsidies, which the Government has introduced without ever actually needing this legislation at all. And so the surprising thing here is that, if you subsidise something, of course it makes it cheaper. But this piece of legislation goes much, much further than that, and that is actually what we are going to be debating here tonight—the legislation and its impacts on the market—rather than simply the subsidies that the Minister has already put in place.

The first point I want to make tonight is that the National Party has a strong record of investing in electric vehicles. And I’d put our record up against this Government’s simply just trying to put this legislation through. National was the party which put in place the exemption for EVs, placing them outside of the road charges until 2 percent of the vehicles were EVs. We implemented tax changes, we worked with business, and we actually made sure the Government and the Government departments were actually increasing the number of EVs—and something which has actually stalled under this Government’s watch. Since then, they have done very, very little.

And now we come to this bill, which, effectively, tries to give the Minister full control of the car industry here in New Zealand by imposing the feebate and Clean Car Standard. And what, effectively, this will be doing is increasing costs for New Zealanders without actually reducing the emissions that New Zealand emits through its transport sector or across the economy. And the Minister says, “This is not going to cost the taxpayer at all.” Well, it’s already cost the taxpayer millions of dollars through his subsidies. It’s already cost the taxpayer, and now it’s going to cost the taxpayer even more because of the charges and the increased cost that it’s going to be putting on to consumers through the feebate and the Clean Car Standard.

Submitters to this piece of legislation made it very clear that this bill will not be able to make the difference in terms of reducing transport emissions, as the Government is trying to make out. The Motor Industry Association and the Vehicle Importer’ Association made it very clear that these targets are too ambitious in the short term, meaning what will end up happening is that we will end up either with New Zealanders not getting access to the cars this Government is promising or New Zealanders having the choice of paying more for the existing cars that they decide to already purchase—for whatever reason they decide to purchase those cars—or they will simply hold on to their existing cars for longer to avoid the additional charges and costs that this piece of legislation will put and impose upon them.

Manufacturers will have the decision whether to send their cars to New Zealand or send them elsewhere. They’ll be able to send them to New Zealand at an increased cost, or they’ll be able to part sell them elsewhere. And the supply challenges, which were brought to us by the suppliers and manufacturers around the world, around vehicles, are some issues that this Government should not be seeking to ignore as they try to implement this policy. If this policy will end up, as I predict, with the number of newer vehicles moving into the fleet slowing down and the number of people holding on to their vehicles for longer, what we’ll end up with is the emissions being emitted from our vehicles actually plateauing rather than reducing, as this Government seeks to do.

A couple of examples as to where this will have a significant impact is, firstly, in the area of utes. Now, the Minister tries to talk about how he’s going to be trying to get everyone out of their cars and into EVs, and I ask him, “Where is the evidence that he’s going to be able to get the tradies out of their utes and into EV utes?” Because the evidence from the market is very clear: these are being manufactured, but they are not at the scale these targets require them to be over the next few years. And the Minister might try and talk about how this is working, but these are the cold, hard facts and realities, which actually may get in the way of his inconvenient truths. The reality is that what will happen is that our tradies, our farmers, and those who need a ute for their job will end up paying, on average, 15 to 20 percent more, on average, for their vehicles. And what will they do with that cost? Do you think they are just going to suck it up? Or do you think they are going pass it on to the people who they supply services for?

💬 Hon Members: Pass it on.

Pass it on. Exactly. Precisely. They will pass that cost on to consumers, whether it’s a farmer, a tradie, or whoever. And people on the other side of the House, we heard the—I think it was the Prime Minister who said that some people don’t use their utes for so-called “legitimate purposes”. Remember that quote? No, they’re not using their utes for “legitimate purposes”. Well, I’d like to put another inconvenient fact out there: the industry’s made it very clear that 70 percent of people who purchase utes purchase them for commercial purposes, and that’s something which I don’t think people on the other side of the House like to hear. And so the reality is that, yes, the market will begin to deliver many more different types of utes, with EVs or hybrids, which will be able to be much more effective, but they are not here yet, and, in the meantime, New Zealanders will be paying through the nose for that.

But it isn’t just utes and farmers and tradies who won’t be able to afford these EVs. It might come as a surprise to the chardonnay socialists on the other side of the aisle—look, there’s one, a chardonnay socialist; hands up, guilty as charged—that a $60,000 Tesla is not actually affordable to most New Zealanders. Now, when they’re drinking their lattes in Ponsonby and Parnell, they might think that a $60,000 Tesla can be bought by anybody. But even with an $8,000 subsidy, as proposed by this Government, most New Zealanders still can’t afford to buy those vehicles. And so, effectively, what we’re doing here is we’re subsidising the people who can already afford to buy the Teslas, and we’re going to tax the people who can’t afford them or who have a much lower budget when it comes to purchasing a new vehicle.

And so they will either pay more for their next vehicle or they’ll simply, as I said earlier, hold on to their existing vehicle for longer, a car which is likely to be emitting more carbon dioxide and which will cost them more in petrol—and we could talk about petrol taxes, as they keep increasing under this Government—and it will be more pollutant in our environment. And so, Madam Speaker, this piece of legislation will have significant perverse impacts on the people that the chardonnay socialists on the other side say they care about—the people of Mount Roskill, the people of Māngere, the people in those suburbs who won’t be able to have the choice even with these subsidies. They’ll be the ones paying more or holding on to their more pollutant vehicles.

And another problem—and we’re going to touch more on this when this bill gets to the committee of the whole House stage—is that this bill, effectively, just gives carte blanche powers to the Minister of Transport to, effectively, increase the charges, determine the subsidies, manage the market as he sees fit from his ivory tower in the Beehive. And that speaks volumes of a Government which wants to tell New Zealanders what vehicle they should be able to drive, tell them when they can drive it, and try to manage the industry as they see fit. National wants to see a transition to lower-emissions vehicles, but we believe on this side of the aisle that you work with the industry; you make sure the targets can actually be delivered on. You don’t say, “Oh, New Zealand, we can choose whatever vehicles we like.”

We are such a small percentage of the vehicle market—0.017 percent of the vehicle market of the world. We have to work alongside the industry, we have to look at what other countries are doing, and we have to work alongside them and give New Zealanders real choices so that they are able to have the vehicles they need for their jobs—the farmers, the tradies, the families with a large number of children, so they can have vehicles for their families. We want to make sure of that without penalising them arbitrarily, as this Government is seeking to do with this piece of legislation. So National will be opposing this piece of legislation, and we will be proposing sensible, pragmatic policies which work alongside industry to make a real difference in this area. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Madam Speaker, thank you. Chardonnay sales are going to take a big jump in the Northern Club and other places habituated by the National Party members, because, despite what the previous speaker, Simeon Brown, has been talking about, there is a lot of support on the other side and has been for electric vehicles: “National is the party of electric vehicles.” Chris Bishop, press release, 9 September 2020. Energy Minister: “The Government wants to see more people swap to electric vehicles, which are cheaper to run and maintain than petrol-fuelled vehicles.” That was the Hon Judith Collins in 2017. Chris Bishop, last year: “They’re the way of the future and the next National-led Government will encourage their uptake.” “A move from petrol and diesel to low-emission transport is the natural evolution. That is our aim to encourage that switch sooner rather than later.” Simon Bridges, press release, 2016.

I could go through several of these quotes, but I think you’re getting idea. Just in case, I bring another tome to the House, where Simon Bridges, if I can go to page 226 [Reading from Simon Bridges’ National Identity]: “I also recall, at the time, for whatever reason, we were down on our luck polling wise. A number in my team, MPs included, wanted to support the tax measures, as they thought it wouldn’t look green and modern if we didn’t. But I spotted an opportunity. I instructed the team to go all guns blazing on social media against the car tax.” We will hear from other speakers from the Opposition, but anyone who is listening tonight, I would just say: take it with a grain of salt, because we know that this is an idea whose time has come. In fact, its time came some time ago.

If we’d been here debating about 120-odd years ago—and, despite claims, I wasn’t there then—what we would have seen is the internal combustion engine was the answer to a problem, not the problem. It was the answer to the problem of the time of a major environmental problem, which was horses. Horses, whose excrement was all over London, was all over New York, as were dead horses. “Something’s required to fix this major environmental problem.”—along came the internal combustion engine. And now, as we know, with that engine, like many things, the cure can become the disease itself.

Now, as has been outlined by the Minister, we are in an era where even, as I’ve shown from those quotes, there is generally full understanding and agreement that we have to do something about this. So this bill is a very timely bill that has come at the very right time. As the Minister has pointed out already, before we have actually had to implement the bill, we are seeing this massive uptake in electric vehicles. Just to put some numbers on those figures that the Minister mentioned: 6,899 battery electric vehicles in 2021; there were 1,554 in 2020. That’s a pretty good uptake. Two thousand four hundred and sixty-one plug-in hybrid electric vehicles in 2021 as opposed to 756 in 2020. It goes on. It is very important that we have a framework, something that is actually now clearly well under way, that we now put some very good legislation and regulation around that, and that’s exactly what this bill does.

Just to get down into some of the detail of it—because it is important that people do understand how it will work—largely, it’s our importers who are the ones who will be determining very much the importation of these vehicles. Because what will we see happen? There will be a market established which will enable them to actually bring in some of the higher-emitting vehicles that will be offset by the low-emitting vehicles they bring in. So it will actually be a relatively neutral experience, as will the cost. So all those that are on the opposite side that are talking about how much this is going to cost, actually, once this is implemented, it will be a relatively cost-neutral exercise.

The other thing, just some of the details, some of the opposition we are seeing or hearing tonight certainly wasn’t evidenced during the select committee, because we did have some very good submissions. Most of the importers came. They talked of their agreement, largely, of this new piece of legislation. They talked about, yes, concerns as to whether the technology will keep up. And also there were concerns that even our standards by 2025 are maybe actually starting to get ahead of some of the European standards; however, they will be aware that the European standards are being reviewed and will be tightened considerably. Also there is the ability—in fact, this will be reviewed in 2024—to ensure that we don’t actually get too far ahead, and we’ll be actually reviewing this.

The select committee had the opportunity to go through this. We’ve made some recommendations. Those recommendations have now been incorporated into the bill. So I’m happy to commend this bill to the House. This is a piece of legislation whose time—well, I won’t say its time has come. Its time is probably overdue, but certainly it is going to ensure that New Zealand—we’d mentioned the fact that we’re now in the salubrious company of Australia and Russia with being without a scheme such as this; so this ensures that we are going to be in a position to ensure that we now do what we can, that New Zealanders will be doing their bit, and more importantly we’ll actually be a very modern fleet to ensure we can do that. I commend this to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my first opportunity to speak in the Chamber in this calendar year, and so it’s good to be back, and it’s good to be back seeing colleagues from across the Parliament debating issues that matter. “Relatively cost-neutral” is what the former highwayman, Robin Hood, used to say of people, as he was robbing them on the highway! The only problem was that, when Robin Hood was talking about relatively cost-neutral interferences in marketplaces, Robin Hood was robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Well, this is a piece of legislation that is reverse Robin Hood—reverse Robin Hood. This is a piece of legislation that takes from those who can least afford it, who have the smallest number of choices available to them, who have the largest impacts of costs upon them, and it takes from that group of people and it gives to those who can afford, who do have choices, who do have options, and who want to drive electric vehicles.

Now, I should say at the outset that I’m a convert. I’ve been driving a 100 percent electric Hyundai Kona now for just over three years and, in fact, have only just, in the last couple days, clicked over 100,000 kilometres driven, mostly around the beautiful Coromandel electorate. It’s served me very well. It’s a car that has been a lot of fun to drive. I’m looking forward to the next 100,000 kilometres in the car. But I bought that car for a variety of reasons, not because it was inexpensive but because I wanted to do several things. First of all, I wanted to prove to people, and myself, that actually a 100 percent electric vehicle was a viable option for a constituency MP doing quite high mileage around one of the large provincial electorates in New Zealand, and I’ve been able to do that very effectively. I wanted to get into an electric vehicle (EV) because, naturally, I have an interest in environmental matters, and climate change matters, and that is absolutely a component in the decision to have a low-emissions vehicle, and to go into an EV.

Then, I also, I guess, looked at the maths, at the dollars and cents. And yes, there was a significantly higher cost point of entry to get into the EV, but the cost of running it, on a day-to-day basis, is very low. Over the course of the 100,000 kilometres that I’ve clocked up around the beautiful Coromandel electorate in almost three years, I think that’s a vehicle that has significantly saved me, as a consumer and as a driver, money. The reason for that is because electricity is considerably less expensive than fossil fuels. Just to give you some context, I used to drive a large Ford Territory, and it was not unusual for me to be spending something close to $200 a week on petrol at the fuel pump. When I went into my EV, I guess my domestic electricity bill went up $50 a month, and so the dollars and cents was another factor.

This piece of legislation, this Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill, seeks to do what Labour socialist Governments always like to do: they like to tell people how they should live their lives, what cars they should buy, how they should be taxed, and always have their hand—the hand of big State, big Government—in other people’s wallets and pockets. And that’s what they like to do, because they don’t understand the fundamentals of economics, and that’s why the country is in the economic shambles and mess that it is, and it’s going to take a National Government to reconfigure, realign, and bring back some sense of balance to the economy with our friends from the ACT Party, when we get the first opportunity at the next election.

We support the broad concept, in the National Party, of making polluters pay. I heard the Minister say, “Oh yes, well, all the parties in the House—in fact, every party in the House—the zero-carbon legislation was passed in this House without dissension.” And that was because one party didn’t turn up and vote. But that would have been just one vote at that stage—and, yes, we supported it. But I heard the Minister James Shaw in the House earlier today talking about the broad direction of travel. And he’s right; we do agree on the broad direction of travel. We do understand the need to decarbonise our economy over the next several decades and beyond. And we do understand that there is a range of options and policy levers that are available to the Government of the day. But we do support the setting up of the climate commission, and we do look forward to their recommendations. But, we reserve absolutely the right to debate, discuss, argue, and differ with the Government on issues of policy and fine detail, albeit that the broad direction of travel towards net zero is set and agreed. That policy of net zero—that path, that direction towards it—will be maintained by a re-elected National-led Government, along with our colleagues in the ACT Party.

But we won’t be tinkering in the way that this Labour Government likes to tinker, likes to tell people how to live their life and how they can, actually, as a Government, tell people what they should do and how they should do it. And the thing that annoys me most about this legislation is the perverse nature of it. It’s actually from a Government that, on the face of it, purports to be a Government of kindness and caring. Actually, when you look down into the reality of it, it’s exactly the reverse that is true because the people who will be most punished by this piece of legislation are those who can least afford it, those who have the smallest range of options in front of them, and those that have already too much cost. Now, a truly enlightened and truly progressive Labour Party would actually look at some of the legislation that has taken place in other jurisdictions, and they’d be looking at legislation that encouraged the uptake of EVs based not on your ability to buy a high-end car, but actually to look at ranges of options, policy settings that would encourage middle and low income earners to get into EVs. Because that’s really where the best benefit is. The people who can currently afford to buy EVs, even with the gift of free money, are going to make that decision anyway.

I was appalled by the Minister’s lack of knowledge and understanding of the marketplace, and this happens from someone who’s come from the pedigree of the trade union and the trade hall—they literally don’t understand it. He stood up there and he said, “Look, look, the number of EVs that have been purchased has gone up dramatically since we started giving away the free money.” Since we started giving away the free money! Well, there’s no skill, Minister, there is no skill, wit, or ability in giving away free money, particularly when it’s other people’s free money—other people’s free money that you give away with such abandon and such ill-conceived thought and understanding for what the impacts are on the people who have to pay to give you the money that you’re giving away to other people. Now, that’s classic socialism, and we don’t support that. We think that there are far better ways of doing it.

In fact, talking about housing in today’s New Zealand Herald—but, actually, it could equally be applied to this piece of legislation—none other than that bastion of left-wing literary comment, Simon Wilson, says, “It’s been the biggest transfer of wealth from the struggling to the well off and from the young to the old ever seen in this country.” And that’s exactly as it is with this piece of legislation. It’s the antithesis of what a traditional socialist Labour Party should really be doing in supporting their base. And the people who are driving the Teslas around the beautiful Coromandel—most of them can actually already afford it, and they would have bought it anyway. Part of the reason that the number of cars being bought since the spreading around of free money has occurred is because this Government signalled years ago that they were going to start giving the free money away. So a whole lot of people actually waited. They sat back and waited and they said, “Well, we’ll just leave the decision to buy our EV. We’ll leave it a year or two because, if we leave it a year or two, guess what? Labour’s going to give us some free money that they have purloined and taken from other taxpayers.”—other taxpayers who will soon be paying for this piece of environmental socialism.

It’s environmental socialism that has, at its core, a fundamental objection to capitalism. They don’t like markets, they don’t like people making choices, and they don’t like suppliers selling product on the basis of features and benefits of the sort that EVs provide to the buyers of them. This is a “ute tax”, and ours is an economy that means that we are different from other jurisdictions. So to simply have the ability to just do a carbon copy of what may have arguably worked in other jurisdictions and apply it to our own doesn’t necessarily follow. We are a country that has a diverse and challenging geography. We are a country that is, essentially, dominated by our rural, provincial, and agricultural economy. Those are features that mean that the sorts of vehicles—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to be here and talk on the first day back for the 2022 calendar year. And can I just take this moment to say kia ora and greetings to everyone across the House. I was just reflecting on the previous member, Scott Simpson’s call and thought, I’m sure Robin Hood wouldn’t mind if he had an electric vehicle during his work, because it would make him really silent and efficient and get a whole lot more treasure, loot, or whatever else he wanted to call it! And I’m sure he too was an environmental socialist in some way, but I’ll let you guys think more about that.

I just want to take a short call just to remind the House about this bill’s primary objective, and that’s to achieve the rapid reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from our light vehicle fleet imported into Aotearoa New Zealand. That’s really the main objective here, and it’s been a pleasure sitting on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. I acknowledge the chair, Greg O’Connor, and the team of those MPs across the House on it. We’ve had some good debate, and that’s been reflected in the work being presented here. There were 135 written submissions—we did do many of those, 28 in total, but at length over several days, where we heard from most of the major New Zealand car manufacturers. And it was interesting—interesting from the perspective that I quite like cars—but I was interested to hear how some of our traditional brands, and those that’ve been here since they got into New Zealand, just some of the issues that they face in terms of modern car production; where New Zealand fits into the scheme of things; how they would make that transition across. It seemed like lots were in a hurry. It seemed that many were keen—in fact, many had already made that transition and were well under way.

Many of the comments that have been said around some manufacturers struggling to meet those targets are true. They acknowledge that; they express that frustration. And, in fairness to them, they are subject to global production schedules and guidelines, and a whole manner of things. Look, for some, it means that’s it, and while some may say, “Hey, look, that’s terrible. Look at their pedigree and heritage in New Zealand.”, we have had new ones. I don’t need to name all of them, but you know we’ve talked about them in the House tonight already. And they have made that transition because electric vehicles are the only thing that they are producing as a manufacturer, and they are doing other bits and pieces around that.

But I want to say this: it took me some time to be convinced and to be brought on board, but as some of the arguments went here and there, I’m absolutely convinced. Because if we look at that primary objective, someone transformational and bold like this Government had to make a call on saying how we are going to achieve this, notwithstanding many people in this House who have purchased electric vehicles or hybrids, and in many local authorities—I heard some jibes across the floor there around local government—but many have responded, and there are articles galore here, examples all over New Zealand, where, in partnership with the New Zealand Transport Agency, Waka Kotahi, there’s been a surge in demand for charging stations. And if you go around Wellington City in my part of the eastern and southern suburbs, you will see a whole lot of charging stations that have been put in. And I know the almighty ratepayer was a bit upset; they said, “Well, how come these have been put in here? No one’s using them.” But can I say now there is a demand; in fact, they want more. And I expect that to happen more and more and more.

And one of the best things about having those car manufacturers come online is that I was able to talk some of them through about some of the concerns about what the second-hand car market looks like—how does affordability feature in your grand plan? I’m no dodgy car sales rep, but I can tell you this: that many are excited, many do want to create a second-hand affordable market where they can sell these vehicles to those who don’t have a lot but still want to continue using a car. Many are also supportive of this Government’s plight to see mode shift, to see us say, “Hey, not only will you consider using this type of vehicle, but looking at other modes such as using public transport.” You only need to go outside, probably not tonight, but on any other day, and you will see a Metlink council-run bus service where it’s an electric vehicle of some sort, and that has taken off across the metro fleets in New Zealand.

Walking and cycling—and I know, I’m a bit of a walker—it’s proved to be beneficial in many ways, but can I say that this is all part of that bigger picture in terms of meeting that primary objective. I am happy that we’ve also announced this clean vehicle standard, and I know that the bill provides the short transition period to enable importers to register a carbon dioxide account before the full standard commences on 1 January 2023. There are targets there, in the bill, and mention of transferring carbon dioxide credits and improved use of the term “used vehicle”. There is, of course, the clean vehicle discount scheme, and those views have been canvassed tonight.

But what I want to finish by saying is that we know that climate change poses the greatest long-term threat to our environment. I’m confident that this bill will function as intended. I’m also confident that the car manufacturers on the whole are supportive, but, ultimately, it is our biggest and most positive step to reducing carbon dioxide emissions in our light vehicle fleets. I commend the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill to the House.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to speak about the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill, and it’s been a while since I’ve been here; so it’s nice to warm up and get some practice. I would like to start off by acknowledging the chair of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, Greg O’Connor, who has shepherded this bill, but also particularly my colleague Julie Anne Genter, who has been integral in driving this work, and who has not only been championing the policies that are in this bill but who has been advocating for many, many years for a reduction in our emissions within transport, acknowledging that, particularly in Aotearoa, this is a massive source of emissions and we need to be ambitious in the legislation that we’re introducing so that we will ensure that we have a liveable planet and that we provide New Zealanders with the options that they require to move around.

I was really struck by the comments from some of the members to my right, who were talking about things like increasing options for people to move around and who were talking about, potentially, having cheaper vehicles in the second-hand market and were telling people how to live their lives—or even champagne socialism—because I think the biggest hypocrisy here is that often, when it comes to low-income people, it is those members to my right who tend to really like to dictate how they live their lives, whether it is through benefit sanctions or putting in legislation that has meant that they cannot be their true selves. So it’s interesting hearing people supposedly advocating for those in Mt Roskill and Māngere, who actually have the most to gain from not just this legislation but a shift in our infrastructure when it comes to transport—getting people to use public transport and other ways to move around. So, yeah, we’re looking forward to this rebranded National Party’s championing of low-income people, and why don’t you start by supporting those on benefits?

As many members to my left have mentioned, New Zealand is a dumping ground for polluting vehicles, and we heard a lot of resistance from industry to this shift in legislation because they know that they will have to change their habits. They know that we will no longer be their dumping ground and that they will have to change the way that they operate.

It was heartening throughout the submission process to hear people calling for ambitious action on climate change to give people options to be able to purchase cheaper electric vehicles, which, again, takes me to that disconnect that the National members were having when it comes to just the reality that people on the ground face, because low-income people are not buying new vehicles. Low-income people, if they’re lucky, are buying second-hand vehicles, and what this bill will do is it will guarantee that people will have cleaner vehicles at their disposal in the second-hand market.

This will address equity issues. This is not, as they propose, a reverse Robin Hood act. If anything, it’s about giving people options, and I think no one would kid themselves when it comes to climate action that this is a silver bullet. This is one of the many levers we need to pull to fully reduce emissions within our transport sector. So, on top of this legislation finally giving people the options that they deserve, we should also be striving for things like free fares; public ownership of our depots, vehicles, and services; better conditions for workers in the industry as well; and a complete paradigm shift when it comes to the way that we fund transport infrastructure.

I think the debate has focused so much just on the impact that electric vehicles will have when it comes to reducing emissions, and it’s important to contextualise this as a broader way of thinking that will lead us to an Aotearoa where people will have options to get to work and to go to school, and where low-income families will not be locked out of the second-hand market and given very few, limited, polluting options because we’ve chosen to be the dumping ground for industry. So it is a real pleasure to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do admire the Minister of Transport’s passion and his determination to drive through this piece of legislation, because he truly does believe—and that makes me very, very concerned. This bill is another example—in fact, it could be among the best evidence—of what’s wrong with this Government’s climate change policy. It all comes back to the zero carbon Act. This bill is two taxes dressed up as an ugly climate fairy. The Minister claims that this bill will lead to reductions in emissions of 41 percent by 2035. The problem the Minister and the Government have with this climate policy is that his own Ministry of Transport says the opposite—that vehicle kilometres travelled will increase by 20 percent by 2035; not go down by 40 percent. These two facts cannot both be true, and that is what we see with this Government’s climate policy. It is running into a brick wall of reality.

Now, I want to remind Minister Wood that simply wishing something to come true when you’re on the campaign trail and then coming to this House and telling the people of New Zealand that it was a manifesto commitment, therefore it will happen, does not make good policy. This policy is actually working, though. The Minister held up his graphs. He held up his graphs—“Oh there’s a graph.” He held it up—“It’s actually working.” It’s working to take money from tradies and business people and family owners who need big vehicles and who have got to pay a $4,000 tax on the wharf and maybe a $2,000, $3,000, or $4,000 tax on the wharf! This is two taxes, mind you. This is not a single tax policy; this is two ideas about how to solve this problem of encouraging more low-emissions vehicles put together into one bill. The officials said, “You don’t need to do that.” The industry said, “You don’t need to do that.” But apparently this is a Government that wants to pull all the levers. Now, I’ve driven a digger. In fact, I drove one a few weeks ago on the Christmas break. I was reminded that, if you pull all the levers at once, a couple of things happen: either it spins around, out of control, or it just comes to a dead stop. I think that’s where this Government’s climate policies are going to end up.

But thinking about this Government’s climate policies, this new style of Labour Party policy must be very, very confusing to Minister Wood’s former colleagues in the union movement; this fact that his policy has resulted—and the motor vehicle importers confirm this: that more Teslas were imported into New Zealand than BMWs in the last quarter. The policy’s definitely working, but not in the way that traditional Labour voters thought it might. When this bill was introduced, the transport Minister admitted that more than 100,000 New Zealanders could be hit with the car tax in the next year. These vehicles being taxed include utilities, utes, tradies’ vans, and, of course, larger vehicles that larger families, particularly people with young children or in mixed families with parents and grandparents, young children all living in the same home—families who need those kinds of low-cost vehicles. They are the ones who will be hit. Now, we don’t know what sort of cars people will buy, but let’s assume the average fee is about $3,000 per vehicle. That’s going to net $273 million from New Zealand motorists buying new vehicles in the next year. Under any plausible scenario, because they won’t be spending even a fraction of that on subsidising Teslas, this policy is nothing more than a tax grab; in fact, it’s an ugly tax dressed up as an ugly climate fairy.

Now, when this bill came to select committee, the industry made some very interesting points. They said, “Only a few countries drive on the left-hand side of the road.” Now, I know not many New Zealanders have left recently, and the ones who are stuck overseas can’t come back, but most countries in the world drive on the right, which means there are very, very few cars available to New Zealand in left-hand drive configuration. That was a surprise to some of the Government members on the committee. The suppliers said, “Look, you’re not going to be able to have these vehicles until we start making them.” This bill doesn’t solve the supply-side problem, because the factories where these vehicles are made are getting retooled right now to churn out hundreds of thousands—millions—of EVs and hydrogen electric vehicles over the next 10 to 20 years, but until they start making them, you can’t have them. So if you apply a tax at the border and if you apply a tax at the lot where people go to buy a new or second-hand car, then all you’ll be doing is taking money out of Kiwis’ pockets, because we can’t supply you with the vehicles. But there is some hope. I don’t need to wish for policy. I don’t need to go out on the campaign trail and make manifesto commitments. I just need to listen to the motor vehicle importers and the suppliers who say that, by the late 2020s, there’ll be millions and millions of these vehicles, and they’ll be relatively low cost.

Now, unfortunately, in addition to the costs hitting Kiwi families, actually this bill won’t reduce emissions. That’s because New Zealand already has a comprehensive emissions trading scheme which caps the limit of climate emissions. And so not a single policy, apart from the cap and trade policy of the emissions trading scheme—it’s a fantastic scheme; it allows the free exchange of people’s money for carbon credits, although, to be fair, it is limited just to this little New Zealand bubble. I can’t buy carbon credits on the London carbon market; they can’t buy ours, but they certainly can plant a lot of trees here and turn our farms into carbon farms—but that’s a story for another day. This bill will not reduce carbon emissions by a single tonne of carbon, because, if you take carbon out of one part of the economy, if you reduce it by subsidising EVs and actually reducing the amount of emissions from cars and trucks, all that will happen is that carbon will be available to be emitted by a factory or some other producer.

Now, if the Minister, in conjunction with his coalition or support, hand-holding partner, the Green Minister for Climate Change, wanted to reduce the amount of New Zealand’s emissions, they’d simply lower the cap on the emissions trading scheme. The Climate Commissioner himself said that New Zealand could meet its emissions reduction targets if the carbon price was $50 a tonne. Well, I had a look at my carbon news the other day, and it’s $72 a tonne. That means that the New Zealand Government doesn’t need to do anything else to reduce carbon emissions. This policy is completely unnecessary. It won’t work, except to take money from hard-working families, tradies, and farmers, and hand it over to people who might have bought an electric vehicle anyway but now will receive a $7,000 or $8,000 subsidy.

So not only is it an unnecessary regulation and a cost to business, it’s actually going to cause a heck of a lot of confusion with the Government agencies asked to administer it. When you look through the papers, the Customs department said, “We don’t want a bar of this thing. Please don’t give us this crazy thing to administer. We don’t want to have to take away from our real job of protecting New Zealand’s borders to try and administer a clean car tax on the wharf. What do you want us to do? Take some sniffer machine around the docks, getting the importers to start the cars so that we can check the emissions.” But that’s what the Government wants to do. They won’t even accept the emissions data from the vehicle manufacturers. They’re going to set up their own department, and they’re going to make up their own mind about what the emissions are. So I tell you what: this thing’s not going to help the supply chain; it’s not going to help get stuff off the wharf.

💬 Simeon Brown: It’s a make-work scheme.

It is a make-work scheme. Unfortunately we’ve got a labour shortage and a whole lot of resource demand; so it’s only going to lead to not just inflation but slowing down of the entire New Zealand machine.

And I want to leave the Government members and the people watching this tonight with one last thought. Any Government policy which claims to reduce emissions that makes the Suzuki Swift off limits—that the Suzuki company said, “We can’t meet your standards. We’re going to stop sending you Swifts because your standards are stupid and wrong.”—that’s not good policy. New Zealanders know that; Japanese carmakers know that. New Zealanders will be asking themselves: why on earth do this when it won’t solve one tonne of carbon emissions and is only going to put the price of cars up? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Good evening.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.